(piano music) Man: We're in the Accademia
in Venice and we're looking at a relatively early Giovanni Bellini. This is the San Giobbe Altarpiece. Woman: This was made for
a church here in Venice dedicated to prayers for plague victims. One of five plague churches in Venice. Venice was a place that especially
suffered from the plague. Man: So this is, we think, the very first Sacra Conversazione that is
set within the architecture of a church painted in Venice. And one of the first
examples anywhere in Italy. Woman: Sacra Conversazione
is a group of saints from different time periods
together in the same space with the Madonna and child. This was certainly a new trend in painting in the late fifteenth century. We see it in the work of
Pierro della Francesca in his Brera Altarpiece
and we also see it in the San Zeno altarpiece. We're invited to join the court of heaven, Mary and Christ surrounded
by saints and angels. Man: And one of those
saints is quite literally inviting us into the space. If you look on the extreme
left you see Saint Francis. He is not only displaying his stigmata, that is the holes in
his hands and his feet and his side that he
received as a kind of honor because he lived his
life so closely to Christ but he is actually beckoning us. If we can be as faithful as he, we could join this spiritual company. Woman: That invitation is there in
the very construction of the painting. The painting had a rounded,
an architectural frame, that had on either side
plasters with capitals very much like the ones that we
see in the painted space. Man: That's right this
painting in it's original frame had married the architecture of the actual church with the architecture
of the invented space. Woman: Bellini is also joining our space with the space of the Madonna and saints by creating this coffered barrel
vault that extends into our space from which a canopy or baldacchino hangs so we really feel this
joining of our own space in the space of the painting. Man: But the architectural
references in this painting are not so much to the
church of San Giobbe as to the most important church in Venice, that is the Basilica of Saint Mark. Woman: We can see that
if we look up at the apse above and behind Mary and Christ. This is exactly what
the inside of Saint Mark looks like with mystical golden
light created by the mosaics. Man: You can also see
references to San Marco in the beautiful [?] decorated marble that exists in back of the throne. After Venice had plundered
Constantinople in 1204 during the fourth crusade
they had brought back all of these treasures including
this very decorative marble, which is all over the
exterior of San Marco. And we see it replicated
here in Bellini's painting. Let's go back to those
saints for a moment though. In addition to Saint
Francis you can see that there are two other
saints on the left side. In the background Saint John the Baptist and then Job himself, who is offering prayers in the direction of Christ and the virgin Mary. Then on the other side
we see Saint Dominick, in the foreground the nearly
naked Saint Sebastian, and then in the back
Saint Louis of Toulouse. Now remember this is just the beginning of what we will call the high Renaissance. Bellini is really
interested in geometry here. You can see that the three
saints on the left side create a kind of triangle with their heads pointing back into space
with Saint John the Baptist's head as the furthest most point. On the right side we have
another triangle of heads, so we have these inverted triangles. Woman: We also have a pyramid in the three angels at the bottom of the throne, and then Mary herself
holding the Christ child, her body forms a pyramid. Something we see very often
in high Renaissance art. We might recall, for example,
Leonardo's Virgin of the Rocks, where Mary and Christ and Saint
John and an angel form a pyramid. Man: Geometry is bound to
help with our understanding of the high Renaissance
because it can help provide a sense of stability, of balance,
and a sense of the eternal. Woman: So what Bellini
is doing so different from earlier Sacra Conversaziones, if we could think for example
of Domenico Veneziano's Saint Lucy altarpiece, there, there is a clear white
light that permeates that space. But here Bellini has created
a golden warm tonality and atmosphere that unifies the figures. Man: I think that also
comes right out of Bellini's experience in San Marco. That architectural space has such
a kind of rich internal atmosphere that is full of mystery,
that is full of shadow. Bellini has brilliantly found a way of
bringing that to the painted surface. Woman: In so many ways this
painting is a continuation of something started by
Masaccio of creating an illusion on the wall of real
space but the naturalism of the Renaissance, its emphasis
on real bodies and real space, is tempered I think by Bellini. That golden light, the
meditative mood of the figures, this all gives us a
sense of transcendence, of looking at something spiritual. Man: One of the things
that I find most powerful about this painting is the
rendering of the human bodies. You have two figures that
are almost completely nude. And whose bodies are
defined so beautifully by the subtle light and Sebastian
really stands out in this regard. Woman: Look at his beautiful contropposto. Man: There is this attention
to the beauty of the body, which is such an expression of
the thinking of the Renaissance. (piano music)